Results of Survey on Courthouse Disputed : Polls: Foes of a plan to build a Municipal Court complex in Chatsworth say the findings that 72% back the project are based on a slanted questionnaire.

A telephone poll, paid for by Los Angeles County, concluded that 72% of residents in the west San Fernando Valley favor construction of a courthouse in Chatsworth, but the project’s critics and a nationally known pollster alleged that the poll was so biased the results are meaningless.

The county paid $9,000 for the survey in an attempt to show that only a few outspoken homeowners oppose building a municipal courthouse on the corner of Plummer Street and Winnetka Avenue.

The county would have abandoned the project if the majority of the 400 residents polled had opposed it, said Deputy Court Administrator Robert Quist.

“We feel the survey verifies what we believed all along, that the outcry is from a small vocal group of residents who are concerned primarily about their property values,” Quist said.

But I.A. (Bud) Lewis, who directs The Times Poll, said the survey was “a classic example of a loaded questionnaire.”

The poll tried to shape respondents’ opinions rather than to solicit their views, Lewis said. The pollsters accomplished this by asking what polling industry insiders call “push” questions, he said. Before residents were asked if they favored the new courthouse location, he said, they were asked a series of questions that actually promoted the court’s aims.

For instance, those surveyed were asked if they knew that the Municipal Court system “collects nearly $100 million annually from fines and bail and distributes these funds to the city of Los Angeles, including the San Fernando Valley, the Highway Patrol, and colleges and universities.”

Respondents also were told that the “municipal courts play an important role in dealing with the wide range of problems facing neighborhoods and the community at large.”

The polling firm, Lewis said, “should find out what people think, not try to convince them and then ask them what they think.”

But Don McGrew, the president of Opinion Research of California, which conducted the survey, disputed Lewis’ conclusions.

“We are a professional company. We do professional work. We don’t think the questionnaire was biased,” McGrew said.

In defending the way the survey was written, McGrew said the county did not want to know just how people felt about a new courthouse. The survey also was expected to determine the extent of residents’ knowledge about the Municipal Court system and their opinions about it.

Both McGrew and Quist suggested that The Times conduct its own poll, predicting the outcome would be similar.

“I bet you a dollar to a doughnut it is substantially the same as what we found,” McGrew said.

Critics of the Chatsworth site also criticized the survey and are countering with their own. During the next two weeks, members of the Chatsworth Homeowners Committee said they hope to poll 800 households about the proposed project. They contend the courthouse would decrease their property values, increase congestion and cause graffiti problems.

The homeowners complained that the county’s poll focused on non-issues, such as whether people’s experiences with Municipal Court employees had been favorable.

The county’s poll did indicate that people who live near the site are less inclined to favor a new courthouse than those who live miles away.

The poll showed that, in the nearby neighborhood, 52% favored the courthouse, compared to 72% in favor throughout the west San Fernando Valley.